Saint Luke's Lutheran Church

Can you feel it? There is something in this place. Something in the people around us. Something in very air we breathe. It is something holy, something awesome, something powerful.

It is an awesome thing to be in this place, on this night, and to hear the Christmas story. Tonight we heard it from two evangelists - first from Luke, who tells the story with a drama that catches our imagination and warms our hearts. Then we heard it from John, who doesn't so much tell the story as he tells us what this story means in words more poetic than dramatic, with words that lift our hearts - lift them high enough to be touched by the very finger of God.

John grasps the heart of the incarnation in the simple yet powerful words when he writes: "The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth."

Have you seen the new TV series called "Joan of Arcadia"? It is the story of Joan, a fairly typical teenager who gets in trouble at school for talking and for not always getting her homework finished on time. She is from fairly typical American family - where the father has problems at work and the siblings are always squabbling. The biggest problem the family faces is that Joan's older brother was in a car accident and is paralyzed from the waist down.

What is unique about Joan is what keeps happening to her. God talks to her. Not the way God talks to you, or me but like the way God used to talk to Joan of Arc. In fact, God appears to Joan. Not in a vision, not in a bolt of lightning, but in rather ordinary people. He might show up as a fellow student, or a jogger on the street, or someone at the bus stop. He may appear as a server in the cafeteria or as a janitor at school. He even appeared to her as an announcer on the evening news. Sometimes it takes Joan a minute to realize that this is no ordinary person talking to her, but it is God.

The theme song for this TV program, "One of Us," was released eight years ago by Joan Osborne. This song raises a profound theological question, although it is posed in somewhat irreverent fashion: "What if God were one of us? Just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home."

Christmas answers that question with a resounding, "Yes, God is one of us." Not in the way that God is portrayed on Joan of Arcadia, however. On that television program, God appears as different people who come and go through Joan's life. But the real story is that God actually became one of us. This is another case of truth being stranger, or rather more wonderful, than fiction. In Bethlehem, God did not just make some kind of cameo appearance on the world stage - showing up to deliver a brief message and then retreat back to his heavenly hideout. No, our God came to experience the fullness of human life - with all of its temptations and trials, with all of its hopes and fears, with all of its dreams and disappointments.

In Bethlehem, God did not just appear in human likeness - like some wingless hit-and-run angel who passes for a regular person only long enough to get a job done. No, our God entered into our world, into our history, in a very real and complete way. He came as a baby, born to real parents, who had to raise him just like every other parent has to raise a child. In Jesus, God did not just pay us a visit, he lived with us - not for a few days or even a few years, but for a lifetime. He was hungry and he ate. He was thirsty and he drank. He was tired and he slept. He was loved by some and hated by others. He was scourged and he bled. He was crucified and he died.

In Joan of Arcadia, God gives Joan assignments which he expects her to carry out. In Jesus, God did not come to give us a message or an assignment. In Jesus, God came to act on or behalf. Later in John's gospel, Jesus says that he came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He did that by taking up the cross and laying down his life for the sins of the world.

John describes this Jesus as a light shining in the darkness. God lit a candle in Bethlehem - one tiny candle, one flickering flame, which seemed as fragile and vulnerable as a newborn baby. The world into which Jesus was born was a dark world - a world of sorrow and suffering, a world of selfishness and sin, a world of oppression and despair. There were those in that world who loved the darkness more than the light - those who tried to extinguish the candle that God lit in Bethlehem. And for a time it seemed as though they had done just that.

In the two thousand years since God lit that candle, the darkness has continued. We also live in a world of sorrow and suffering, of selfishness and sin, of oppression and despair - a world where conflicts and hostilities mock the message of peace on earth; a world where oppression and terrorism breed fear and death; a world where lust and lewdness, greed and arrogance leave no one unscathed. Yet the candle that God lit in Bethlehem continues to pierce the darkness with the light of love and peace, with rays of hope and joy. For the light of the world they put to death on the cross was extinguished for only three days - then he rose from the dead with even greater glory.

That light continues to shine, with increasing brightness. This is the reason that we are here to night - because that light has sparked a flame of faith in our hearts. There is something in the air tonight. Can you feel it? It is something holy, something awesome, something powerful. It is the light that the darkness cannot overcome. It is the joy that the sorrow cannot subdue. It is the peace that the conflict cannot shatter. It is the love that hatred cannot overshadow. It is the hope that despair cannot defeat.

What is in the air tonight does not come from somewhere deep inside of us, but from some place far beyond the boundaries of the human spirit, far beyond the limits of time and space, far beyond the here and now. For unto us a child is born, and his name is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. For unto us a son is given and his name is Jesus - the Son of God, the Savior of the world. Amen.